When a tumor necessitates a transformative surgery that leaves her with one breast and one “scoop”, willful contrarian JAY learns that buxom used to mean obedient, but she needs a word for how her body is now; and that she and NURSE THINGY aren’t going to get along. As JAY struggles with how to be one-breasted in a city where she never sees herself represented, the spirit of activist AUDRE LORDE reaches across forty years to remind her that “how to look the same is not the question some of us have.” Over the course of the play, JAY fights the shame, the urge to hide, and the pressure to acquiesce in the fiction that “nothing much happened here”. She asks: Is the hatred of asymmetry wired into the brain stem? If she were a one-breasted chicken, would she be done in by flock mentality? When the push to symmetry uses strong arms, she pushes back: when an osteopath tells her that scars are three-dimensional in the body and will try to grow through adhesions, JAY realizes her job now is to counter the pull of scar tissue. Drawing inspiration from a journey that runs from the library shelf to the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption, by way of Titz’n’Glitz boob art and Barbie in duct tape, JAY does just that. Along the way, she finds shifting allies and antagonists who are funny, surreal and troubling. As JAY reconstructs her own kind of symmetry by “making something from what was taken”, she finds an identity she can claim: She is Scoop.
Written by Julie Vandervoort
Directed by Andrew Chandler
Stage Managed by June Zinck
Sound Design by June Zinck
Lighting Design by Alison Crosby
Costume Design by Kelsey Stranger
Projection Coordination by Garrett G. Barker
Media Design by Sean Skerry
Performed May 30 - June 2, 2019
At the Neptune Scotiabank Studio Stage
As part of Eastern Front Theatre's
2019 STAGES Festival
Featuring
Julie Vandervoort
Ryanne Chisholm
Samantha Wilson
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"Everything was so true."
"Humour along with moments of horrible realization. As a fellow scoop, thanks for sharing this story"
"I felt such comfort seeing my body and so many experiences so mirror image reflected as you stood there, vulnerable, defiant, and straight talking"
Meet Julie
Julie Vandervoort has been part of the women’s community and the writer’s community in Halifax for more than 25 years. As an arts worker, she is the award- winning author of two books, Tell the Driver: A Biography of Elinor F.E. Black, M.D. (University of Manitoba Press) and The Perimeter Dog (Libros Libertad), a collection of creative non-fiction essays. One piece from that collection was chosen for a keynote presentation at a 2009 conference in the Netherlands called Imagining Amsterdam: Visions and Revisions. She has given sponsored readings across Canada, including Mayworks Vancouver, and has served on arts panels, grant juries and the Board of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia. She is a member of PARC and of The Writers’ Union of Canada. She participated, as a singer and organizer, of three deep ecology choral CDs, including Widening Embrace, recorded at the Banff Centre in 2011. She wrote, narrated and co-produced Sewing Cabinet, a 2017 SPFF (smart phone film festival) selection. As a legal worker, she has been active in human rights and labour law since 1995 and was part of an ARC (Aboriginal Rights Coalition) human rights observer team in Burnt Church, New Brunswick.